Washback from speech contest

I think I’m still recovering from the speech contest I think. Last night I slept 14 hrs. Tonight I fell asleep a little around 6pm and slept till past 9.

I learned a lot through the experience (even though I didn’t win). G* said he had noticed an improvement since I started working for the contest. I learned an awful lot about pronunciation as well as how to construct a story and persuade people in Korean.

I’ve started reading 살아 있는 동안 꼭 해야 할 49가지 and I’ve almost been able to understand the first chapter with a word list of around 60 new words that I’ve had to look up for this chapter. I want to keep on reading that book and write about it in my diary.

Next week I want to ask J* Ssem about applying for the school reading program where a student comes for 30 minutes or so per week to help me in my Korean reading.

My vocabulary has definitely kept on growing, and maybe even grown more then before as I leverage every chance to learn a new word. However there are still far too many gaps. The books I’ve gotten are useful and I want to start using http://iteslj.org/v/k/ English Korean word quizes to fill in the gaps of basic vocabulary. I also want to use the SongGyeong Korean – it’s convenient because it’s online so I can do it at work. The word quizes total about 671 words — and all of them seem quite useful for describing basic aspects of life, such as vegetables, fruit, flowers, country-side words, city words, majors (as in school majors), transportation and sports. Words that I have to know but where my knowledge of those domains are quite spotty. Learning all the words in the quizes will reinforce old words I already know (mainly nouns), and fill out my knowledge of those domains.